


Twenty Tribes

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: AU where everyone is Jewish, Alternate Universe - Jewish, Gen, Half of them are like 'let me tell you how Jewish I am', Judaism, Origin Story, Pesach | Passover, and I have no idea how this AU works, and the other half are treating it like some big secret, or become Jewish, or their parents were Jewish but chose not to raise them that way, or was raised Jewish even if they fall out of it, slight Lion/Luther
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 09:19:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10636902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: Jacob had twelve sons; the Emperor has twenty.





	

_Aryeh ben Canaan_

Belief in a supreme deity was an outdated superstition, anyone would tell you, but the Friday night gatherings were tradition, and the Order believed in traditions. They kept the mystic rites, like their ancestors from the world of Tzfat--wherever that was.

The Lion was neither a mystic nor a traditionalist, but he had never protested pulling on his hooded cloak and going out to the fields to sing in the rest day. He did not say he liked it, because that might require explaining why. He liked that Luther was more affectionate with him at those times—whispering “Aryeh” in his ear to get his attention, holding his hand or putting an arm over his shoulder, the usual rules of behaviour between men superseded when the spirit was upon them, shuckling and dancing with the words of Lekhah Dodi. They could be brothers, not grand master and subordinate, whichever of them was in which role.

 _It came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul,_ he thought, but did not say.

*

_Moshe ben Chaim_

Supervisors were rare on Chemos because they were a drain on resources--people not actively engaged in manufacturing. On the other hand, some level of organization and leadership was needed to maximize productivity and assess output and perform necessary administrative functions. Some time had to be allotted and deemed worthy of food-credit in exchange, so they existed.

An overseer was not so vaunted a position as to beat a factorum worker, but what they could do was not less devastating for being insidious. They could deem someone a drain on resources for not making their quotas, make a tally mark that they were to receive no more rations or compensation, for nothing could be wasted without expectation of return. Lives had to be preserved, as many as possible, for that was a high commandment and how else to do that but to forsake that minority who had run out of productivity?

Fulgrim thought, _To save a life is to save the whole world._ When no one was looking he reversed decisions, unchecked boxes. Those with age and experience had wisdom to contribute, which was valuable in the long-term. Short-term gain have them only dying off one by one as slowly the production capacity degraded along with the equipment, until everyone died. Then who would praise the Holy Name?

Was it not said angels sung _Kaddish, kaddish, kaddish?_ \--They sang. Was that not what God wanted?

*

_Eben ben Avi_

Honour your father. He had heard it a hundred times--not because he’d done anything wrong to merit a lecture, but because he listened and he studied. Keep the commandments the Lord has given us. Be good. Do as you are told.

Perturabo bit his tongue and did not ask what you did if your father was unworthy, if your father was wicked. Such a question would get back to Dammekos, even framed as a hypothetical. Besides, he knew the answer. He could read the commentaries as well as anyone. So the Lord had commanded, even if your father was unworthy, even if he was wicked, for by honouring your father did you honour God. So he would obey and keep his part of the covenant he had been given.

(Sometimes he wondered if God was worthy, for having commanded him thus.)

*

_Joshua ben Boaz_

They were safe in the walls. The nomads, the barbarians, they were dangerous to a small party out in the open to enjoy a hunt, perhaps, but not to a prepared army, not to a city. They might as well fear wild animals when they were human, masters over beasts, possessors of great technology, they whose ancestors had journeyed the field of stars. Who cared that a new khan had united the steppe tribes, anymore than they cared which dog led a pack or horse a herd?

Yet the walls of their city fell, to blackpowder bombs and siege cannons pulled by many horses, with peels like thunder. The sun blazed by day on the defenders, forcing them to remove their heavy armour, and no sooner had they when lightning and hail fell upon them, killing more soldiers than the nomads.

God fights for Jaghatai Khan, they said after, those of his people who had been there, for none from the cities who had opposed him remained.

*

_Zev ben Tomer_

‘What’s it this time?’ Bulveye asked Corswain as he watched what had previously been a perfectly good fortress reduced to rubble, stone dust and adamantite beams flying every which way. ‘The usual Hasidim vs. Mitnagdim argument about the Vilna Gaon and the Ba’al Shem Tov?’ Bulveye politely didn’t add, _Who he was entirely right to excommunicate_ , unlike Russ on several occasions.

‘I believe Lord Russ may have said something about the appropriateness of almonds rather than walnuts in charoset. And Lord Jonson may have responded with a comment about Russ’ Litvak accent.’

‘And then it was on.’ Bulveye watched the growing destruction with an indulgent eye, then turned back to the Lion’s seneschal. ‘Do you want to find the afikoman while they’re busy?’

‘Find it? They’re the ones who need to ransom it back from us, after we steal it while they’re distracted.’

‘Who does it like that?’

‘Us.’

‘My ax says you Calibanites are wrong.’

‘My sword says we aren’t.’

*

_Yitzhak ben Enoch_

The patriarch of the Dorn clan was a great man with many reindeer in his herds and many factories below the ground and many tents for his servants. They said he spoke to God, who had told him to leave the house of his father, an idolater, in the ice hives and strike out on his own.

The stories told among the Imperial Fists went that God said to him that his children would be a great nation, conquering the stars. The old man grew confused. That was the story of an older father, the father of all their people, yes, but he had no children and no likelihood of having any. He had taken a husband in his youth, not a wife, and even that man he had outlived, having reached a great age by this point. He knew the commandment to be fruitful and multiply, but he had left that to his people, who considered him their patriarch, even if he had no children of his body.

But God’s will is done in time, and out on the snows, searching for a lost calf, the old man heard the sound of a child’s cry upon the wailing winds. This could not be, a babe fallen from the heavens, out in the frozen wilderness, yet alive. Yet it was, for the child was a primarch, though none knew the meaning of that for some time to come. The old man of the Dorn laughed, for he saw God’s covenant had been renewed, and built a house of worship there, a new Beit El, and took his grandson home.

*

_Jeremiah ben Layla_

‘Who were you expecting? Your son, returned triumphant from war? “Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why so late the chatter of his wheels? They must be dividing the spoils they have found: A damsel or two for each man, spoils of dyed cloth for Sisera, a couple of embroidered cloths round every neck as spoils.”’

‘No, please...’ the old woman blubbered. All her life taking the blood and fat from the people as the daughter, then wife, then mother of a king, now afraid to shed her own blood in turn. ‘Don’t do this. I’ll give you anything.’

‘“You shall not judge unfairly: you shall show no partiality; you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the plea of the just. Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that the Lord is giving you.”’

‘You know,’ came Sevatar’s drawl from the door, interrupting his bloody work, ‘you could also go with: “And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”’

‘Shut up, Sev,’ he snapped.

‘Shall I think of something more to your liking, sire? “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet He does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.”’

Curze indulgently allowed his recitation, knowing what it was leading up to. He only cuffed him hard enough to make him stagger, not knock his head off, affectionate, leaving streaks of blood and viscera behind on his armour.

Unable to not have the last word, the primarch added, ‘“So may all Your enemies perish, O Lord. But may Your friends be as the sun rising in might.”’

*

_Samson ben Malachi_

‘It was killed by a beast. Would that I could have found the lamb in time to stop it, but alas I arrived only in time to drive it from its bloody meal.’

Lying was wrong, but Sanguinius knew he lied to save his own life. If they knew...

‘That was some monster, boy. Look at how it’s been torn to shreds. There was nothing you could have done.’

‘I’ll find it. I’ll slay it so the flocks might be safe.’ He lied, but he could always find something monstrous in the radiation wastes to kill, some potential threat that could have been. That would serve the community and save sheep that would have been taken otherwise.

Really, what had come over him? He knew the law as well as anyone else. _Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat, as with the green grasses, I give you all these. You must not, however, eat flesh with its life-blood in it._

*

_Yisrael ben Barzillai_

‘I hear he wrestled a leviathan.’

‘I heard it was a golem. He’s a golem himself too, but he saw the words on his forehead in a mirror and learned to command himself.’

‘No, see, he fancies himself a great hunter, like Nimrod. He called out to the heavens and when he was answered, he tried to wrestle an angel, like Jacob our father did. That’s why he’s horribly scarred.’

The three wasteland scavengers looked to the fourth around the fire for a juicy rumour. The man, a giant from some heavy-lifting geneline before the fall of the Old Night over Medusa, leaned conspiratorially closer, and whispered in a deep growl, ‘I hear it was a dragon.’

They all laughed and got back to toasting their sausages and canned meat as they traded more practical news. One woman mentioned to the giant, ‘Nice gloves.’

‘Thanks. They’re my favourites, so much I don’t know that I’ll ever take them off.’ He winked, then spread his cloak to sleep on.

*

_Aaron ben Shiphrah_

Aaron, they called him, taking the name the slave masters had given him and making it their own.

He was disappointed, at first, when he heard the stories. Wasn’t Moses the hero, the freer of slaves, leader of his people? But Aaron grew on him, as the name sounded more and more like his own, and the faint memories of water and glass and somewhere else faded.

Aaron, who had been raised a slave, not a prince. Aaron who spoke for a brother whose tongue didn’t work right. Aaron who stayed with the people rather than going up the hill to speak to a higher power. Aaron the priest, whose sons ministered to the people and carried on his legacy.

Yes, as they left the land of their affliction for the wilderness, as their people had once left slavery to the Pharaoh in Egypt, he could be Aaron, as his brothers and sisters called him.

*

_Reuben ben Tamar_

‘This is between us.’

‘Should I not tell Father?’ Roboute asked. He didn’t like the idea, it made being here seem bad, but he trusted Mamzel Euten.

‘It’s not a secret, it’s just... unusual. It is the culture of _my_ ethnic group, not Konor’s or the majority of Macragge. We’re not persecuted here--we’re not outlawed--but religion is not popular and most of the religious people you see in this sector are Catheric or Ganonites.’

‘You want me to be part of your people, though.’

‘I do. It’s always been through the maternal line, after all.’

‘I don’t know if I believe in your God, though.’

‘Konor is letting me bring you to the synagogue more as an indulgence to me than anything else, but I think it would do you good to know about more people and cultures. You only know a small section of Macragge’s upper crust and their values. My people have a very different history, world-view, set of laws and values that I’ve built up over tens of thousands of years.’

‘I want to know,’ he said, like he always said. He wanted to know everything, wanted all the information, yet this... this was filed away differently. Not an anthropological study, but his mother’s people. His people, as sure as his father’s. Not someone else’s laws or quaint rituals, but the way things were done because that was what you did.

*

_Mordechai ben Meron_

‘You wouldn’t be interested, lord. It’s only a thing of farmers.’

‘You’ll take my aid bringing in your crops, yet you don’t believe I would lower myself to hearing the words said over them?’

‘I suppose you have me there,’ the peasant--the human--told the stranger who to all rights seemed like a warlord and necromancer but had not come to reeve. ‘Do you have gods up on the mountains? We thank ours for the growing things, the good air and rich soil in the valleys. We say _Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha’olam hamotzi lehem min ha’aretz._ Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who who causes bread to come forth from the ground.’

His father’s people had gods, but they were dark gods of fog and rot. Life was a disease that was always appearing, while death and what lay beyond were truth. Then again, Mortarion didn’t like his father very much. ‘Not ones like that. Tell me of yours.’

*

_Meir ben Maimon_

Magnus was the greatest scholar they’d ever known. He improved upon Maimonides and the Ba’al Shem Tov. He wrote commentaries on Gilda Garza, the great author of halakha for new circumstances brought about by the migration of her people from fabled Terra, and on Saraiene, who had interpreted where the law should stand on xenos. He uncovered ancient writings oft referred to in other texts but believed lost, like those of the M24 rabbi Real bat Isha, the artificial intelligence that had declared herself a person and a woman and a Jew, even knowing where her calls for rights for artificials in _When We Were Robots in Egypt_ would lead humanity during the Age of Strife.

His greatest work though, it was agreed on Prospero, was in defence of psykers under halakha. “You shall not let a witch live” was an ancient prohibition against worship of other gods, their rituals and mysteries. To study the ways of the mind outside the body as a Jew was no contradiction and no sin. It was another branch of science and another branch of mysticism, no more. To discriminate against psykers was to go against kavod habriyot. How could anyone doubt, when he’d laid out his arguments so clearly and in accordance with the law?

*

_Joseph ben Adam_

‘What is this?’ asked the child, his astonishment so clear at a world he’d never seen before, a world outside the deep mines of Cthonia.

He would be strong some day, and wise, but for the moment his father couldn’t help but think of the simple child, too young to understand. Smiling at the memory, his father told him, ‘They are festive because of the power of the Imperium, that brought them out of bondage to fell tyrants and false gods. They celebrate that my son has been returned to me.’

‘Oh,’ said the child, impressed by the lights all around him, as he had been by the light of the stars and the glory of his father.

His father remembered the story of Jacob, reunited with a son he’s thought dead, saying _Now I am ready to die._ He, who had lived so long and intended to live forever, thought instead _Shehecheyanu, v’kiyimanu, v’higiyanu la’z’man ha’zeh._

His father remembered, _I shall accept you when I take you out of the nations, and I shall gather you from the lands in which you were scattered, and I shall be hallowed through you before the eyes of the nations._

He had outlawed the worship of any gods in his new empire because it was politically use in his war against Chaos, but he had not always felt that way and he had not _forgotten_.

*

_Elior ben Pinchas_

‘We’ve heard messianic cults before and we’ll hear them again,’ snapped the prisoners, and Lorgar looked at him as they were taken away to learn the error of their ways--They as a people might see this again and again, but they personally would not be hearing anything ever again.

‘Why do they not understand? The coming of the glorious God-Emperor of Mankind will uplift Colchis. We must be ready.’

‘You’ll understand when you’re older,’ Kor Phaeron told him. ‘Do not let yourself be troubled in your faith now.’

‘Of course not, Father,’ the boy who did not doubt agreed.

Aye, when he was older. His faith was too popular and too useful now. But someday he’d see the value of gods who answered prayer, not this Anathema he saw visions of or the silent God of their ancestors.

*

_Solomon ben Tuval_

‘Tahounia’s getting married, not you. I don’t see why you’re the one this nervous.’

‘I’m not worried.’ Vulkan had to admit that was a very unconvincing reflective lie. Ayala rolled her eyes and continued checking her embroidery on their sister’s veil. ‘At least I’m being worried at you instead of bothering her,’ he corrected himself. ‘I’m just saying it will be awkward to hold up a corner of the chuppah when I’m so much taller than her betrothed’s brothers. That’s why I’m thinking about these things in advance.’

‘I’m sure you’ll think of something,’ she said without looking up.

‘I’m a brilliant strategist, you know.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘I’m going to go get extra oil in case the ner tamid at the assembly hall is low. No one would have been able to bring any yesterday with the raiders driving everyone to ground.’

‘They could still be around. Don’t go yet. The rabbi will be there and she’ll be bunkered down fine. Vulkan, are you listening to me? Vulkan? Shlomo!’ she yelled after him, before giving up. ‘Honestly, that boy.’

*

_Orev ben David_

‘I can hear well enough for here. I have good hearing,’ he assured the old men and women who lead prayers; political prisoners--dissidents, agitators, members of outlawed religions.

‘I suppose you’re not old and deaf like us,’ they agreed, having little metric to understand a strange being such as him.

He was lying. Even he could barely hear the echoes while keeping watch this far out, but it needed done. The guards should not be allowed to interrupt without warning.

He muttered the prayers and psalms to himself, under his breath, silent and unseen. ‘Give ear, O God, to my prayer; and hide not Thyself from my supplication. Attend unto me, and hear me; I am distraught in my complaint, and will moan because of the voice of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked...’

*

_Benyamin and Ephraim ben Bityah_

He found his twin a ways from the war camp, staring at the world’s two moons. ‘Three stars visible.’

‘Yes.’

They both knew what day it was.

‘We need eight more, or is that nine?’

‘If the count’s off, the Torah can be the tenth.’

Neither of them made any more to gather more people, eight or nine of them. You kept your religion secret, especially from Imperials. Their mother of all people had taught them that from their earliest memories. So, despite it being against tradition to not have a minyan, they said the kaddish for her yahrzeit alone, just the two of them.


End file.
